Local poet finds his way

August 9, 2012

FALLING WATERS - Poetry has always been Michael Jones' way out of a dark place. Motivated by mental illness that has gripped him most of his life, Jones starting writing. Some of his poems were a bit brighter, with love for the girl that became his wife. But most of them offer imagery of pain.

"Black words fall from my eyes," begins a piece in "Torn From Two Ends," Jones' second collection of poems. It, and his first, "Maggots & Horseflies," are available as downloads from booktango.com, an online publisher for e-readers.

Jones' route to publication has been rutted with pitfalls, including divorce and hospitalization. He said he didn't know as a teenager that he was bipolar and schizophrenic. His lowest point came on the day he was discovered penning a suicide note as "I put a 12-gauge shotgun in my mouth," he said.

"I didn't have much ambition for life," he said.

A graduate of Hedgesville High School, Jones, 38, is now working toward a degree in English and creative writing at Shepherd University. He attends part-time, while working for a printing company. And he does see the irony in a working as a printer while also publishing electronically.

"I may put myself out of business," he said. "But it's new technology. We either adapt or technology does away with us."

Jones said he "tried to self-publish the old-fashioned way a few years ago," but didn't get far. Then he received an email from Booktango, a site for self-publication that walks authors through every step, from formatting to selecting a book cover.

Booktango is one of several publishing entities under the Indiana-based umbrella company Author Solutions, which describes itself as the world's largest independent e-book publisher. Established in 1997, Author Solutions has "helped more than 140,000 authors self-publish, promote, and bring to market more than 170,000 new titles," according to its website.

"We're a conglomerate of some of the largest self-publishing brands," said company spokesman Tom Howell. "An author comes to us with a book project and we assist them with everything."

Writers can pursue a do-it-yourself route that costs nothing, or purchase professional services such as editing. Author Solutions also has connections to Hollywood, offering writers the chance to see a novel become a screenplay. But Jones' aspirations for his work are not glamorous.

"I want to get awareness out for mental illness," he said. "If I could save a life, that would be the greatest thing I could do."

Jones appreciates that Booktango offers its writers 100 percent of the royalties from book sales, something sites such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble do not do. But most important, being published allows him to reach out. "I thought that it would bring good awareness to mental illness," he said.

Jones said a writer can only write about what he knows, and he has lifetime knowledge of psychiatric disorders. He started writing at age 16, as his illness began intruding on daily life. It took him five years to graduate from high school, he said.

His suicide attempt landed him on the psych ward of City Hospital in Martinsburg for a week. A second hospital stay introduced a pharmaceutical regimen aimed at leveling Jones' condition.

It didn't work. "I was unable to handle that drug therapy," he said. "It was the wrong medication. I went out of control again."

But new treatments are working better, and Jones, who lives in Falling Waters, has a handle on his life. College, he said, is "something I never thought I would be able to do."

Cover art for Jones' two books came from his girlfriend, also a Shepherd student. "She engraved the handwritten copy that I have as a leatherbound book," Jones said. "I took a photo of that."

Jones is proud that "Maggots & Horseflies" has been named a three-week bestseller on Booktango, having sold 10 copies in a month. He is now moving into fiction, writing short stories that he describes as "macabre."

And although the stories are dark, Jones says that his mood is not. Psychiatric intervention means he is "not so dwelling on problems," he said. Now the words, he said, "flow a little better."